The material presented
here is not Al-Anon Conference Approved Literature. It is a method
to exchange
information, ideas, feelings, problems and solutions on a personal
level.
From childhood I grew up in a house where I was taught not show feelings (only happy ones). Anyway, when my mother passed away and I started to cry she said "Don't cry" and I just stuffed the feelings. I realized I never really grieved my mother's death, just went about business. Now, sometimes I get down and have anxiety, but I can't figure out where it's coming from. I don't even know if I trust my feelings? Not sure if this makes sense. Would writing things out help?
Writing things out helps me tremendously..... that and do you have someone you can confide in? I know I need to talk out everything sometimes..... I have a couple friends that will let me go on and on and never seem bothered.... helps sooo much!
My daughter has done this for years. She had 6 miscarriages and lost 2 babies to death due to early births. Her husband would never let her talk about the babies or how she felt. She stuck all those feelings back into this "room" and put up a wall. Now her husband is dead .... and she has no idea how to grieve ...or to feel any of her feelings.
Awareness is a beginning .... we have to be aware before we can start changes. I think you're on the right track.
Well I think it would be great if you can get to your feelings. Grief is valid. There are lots of books on this stuff. There are also groups, egroups and more.
yahoogroups have many groups that deal with grief.
I hope you will choose to keep coming and sharing of your progress.
I had been hearing "write about the feelings" for YEARS from a counselor, and it just seemed incredibly stupid because I had been over and over and OVER it all in my head.
For some reason, when my sponsor kept saying the same thing, I finally started writing. Now, I'm normally a pretty adept writer, but this wasn't very adept writing. I couldn't say "I feel xxxxx", BECAUSE I DIDN'T KNOW. I had to write, "I feel like somebody is throwing bricks at me". Now, I had been thinking these identical words for weeks. But when I wrote them down, something different happened - I thought of turning around to see who it was. And when I imagined myself turning around - the bricks stopped.
I downloaded lists of feelings so I could start to recognize what feelings I was having. It wasn't that I didn't know the words, it was that I couldn't summon any of them in response to what was going on inside me. I was so proud of myself when I actually figured out I was feeling "anxious"! - and then my sponsor told me that, like fear, that's usually masking another feeling underneath. Aarrrrgh!
I'm still not very good at writing about my feelings regularly, but at least I now acknowledge that's what I need to do when I get in a place where I feel anxious, confused, frightened, adrift. When I manage to actually do it, write about the feelings - something shifts. The feeling doesn't exactly go away, but it morphs somehow into something I'm better able to deal with. Not instantly, and not by sitting down and writing for 5 minutes - I mean writing until there's nothing more to write, and then coming back and doing it again the next day.
